


Almost Impossible

by blackpercy



Series: We Could Be Heroes [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Super Powers, Alternate Universe - Vigilante, F/M, Gen, M/M, and there are mentions of using sedatives on the kids, pls skip if u are triggered by such things, the first 4 chapters are about jason+piper's kidnapping, this is gonna be a wild ride, this will also talk heavily about trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackpercy/pseuds/blackpercy
Summary: When thirteen-year-old Leo's best friends mysteriously go missing and their case is dismissed, he makes it his mission to find them. His search takes him to places he never knew existed, places that make him question the logical world he's built for himself.With help from a mysterious girl with powers over time and a teenaged boy looking for his best friend, Leo discovers a whole new world living in his friends, and he struggles to find his place in it.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Percy Jackson & Grover Underwood, Grover Underwood & Rachel Dare, Hazel Levesque & Frank Zhang, Jason Grace & Piper McLean & Leo Valdez, Leo Valdez & Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson & Grover Underwood, Rachel Elizabeth Dare & Grover Underwood & Leo Valdez
Series: We Could Be Heroes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020228
Comments: 19
Kudos: 39





	1. blink and you'll miss it

Piper struggles against the binds. 

She’s not smart, like Leo. She doesn’t know what material they’re made of, only that it’s not rope. 

It feels like the only thing Piper knows is what isn’t. She knows they’re way out of town because, on the way, the smell of grass and manure filtered into the car. She knows they’re in a factory of sorts because of the sound of machinery when they were entering. That was before the rough handed woman stuffed them somewhere and covered their eyes. For an eighth-grader, her powers of deduction are rather impressive, but they won’t help her or Jason.

“Jason?” 

Her voice comes out wavery and scared. Piper can feel the trembling in her chest at the terrifying situation. 

“Jason?” She cries again. The silence is deafening, the darkness covering her eyes is even more disconcerting. The air is stale and cold, Piper shivers then immediately regrets ever having moved. Sweat soaks her short-sleeved shirt, fit for the start of school in Nevada, but not for a chilly kidnapping location.

She wants to turn to her side, reach out her hand to Jason’s, and tell him they’re going to be okay. On their second day (or third? Fourth? Piper doesn’t _know_ ) without food, Piper’s stomach grumbles. Yesterday, the only thing Jason did was talk to her before it went quiet.

No matter how many times she called his name, it was only quiet.

* * *

“Piper and Jason went missing _here_.”

A small, skinny, boy with overgrown curly hair stands in front of the Chief of Police. He has an iPad in his small hands with an annotated map on the screen. Circled in red, is a street close to the Wilderness School, a boarding school for troubled kids.

The Chief scratches his head and exchanges a look with his colleague. It’s not every day you get lectured by a middle schooler.

“Um, and how do you know this, young man?” He asks. The little boy shoots him a glare.

“ _I was there!_ ” He repeats for the third time. He throws a hand in the air, resting the other on his hip and his pointer finger and thumb on either side of his nose. It’s probably something he learned from a _tía_. “Why did I expect competency from the local police,” he mutters.

The Chief pretends not to hear that. “So you’re a witness?”

“Aren’t you a little detective?” The boy sneers. He returned to his iPad, leaving a frustrated Chief of Police.

Five minutes later, he has CCTV footage on the device. His expression is blank. “See that? That’s CCTV footage and I got that twenty-six hours faster than any of youpeople. As you can see, that lady who looks like she hasn’t showered in days snatched my friends when I turned my back. There isn’t a camera in the alley, how convenient, but maybe you could tell someone to check that out.”

The boy is talking so fast, the Chief can barely keep up. He catches the street name and something about incompetence before the boy proceeds to walk right out of the precinct.

A woman with a badge pats the Chief’s shoulder as she passes by. “You’re gonna have to follow him, sir. That’s our only witness.”

With a sigh, the Chief of Police sinks into the nearest chair. _Perfect_.

* * *

Leo doesn’t bother going to school that day.

The only important thing right now is Jason and Piper, his best friends in the world, who went missing a couple of days ago.

Leo only remembers turning around to get a picture of a raccoon with Piper’s phone, then turning back around only for them not to be there. He looked everywhere, called out their names, made sure that Jason wasn’t pranking him.

They had truly disappeared.

Piper’s dad is in Greece filming a movie. He was the first person Leo called because he had always been nice to him. Then Leo talked to Jason’s stepmom, Hera, because he knows she cares about Jason in a weird way.

Then Leo had looked into all the camera footage he could, he checked everywhere, for any sign of them, but found nothing.

With a silent grumble, Leo drags himself back to school. He gets detention for being out past curfew, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing, really, matters anymore because Piper would have helped him escape while Jason told them off but helped anyway. It doesn't matter because they're gone and nobody is taking him seriously and _they're gone_.

He collapses onto the hard twin bed and stares at the ceiling. There’s a dark watermark staining it a couple of inches to his left. The faint sound of a student using the bathroom upstairs filters through the walls.

“I’ll find you,” Leo promises them, wherever they are. “I’m not gonna leave you behind.”


	2. what we miss in the shadows

Two weeks later, Jason and Piper’s disappearance has been determined as a cold case.

Leo gets the notification from the local news and almost screams in outrage in his Advanced Calculus class. He gets up, ignores the protests of his teacher, and storms out.

He walks all the way to the precinct (it took an hour), but when he gets there he’s furious. 

“Doesn’t anybody know how to do their job around here?!” He screams. The woman at the front desk startles at the sight of a small eighth-grader with a tomato-red face. An officer presses a walky-talky, and Leo hopes for his sake he’s calling the Chief.

“Literally!” Leo throws his hands to the sky. “Is it so difficult, trying to find a couple of pre-teens who disappeared? Why are you even getting  _ paid _ ?”

Someone looks offended. Good.

The Chief of Police rushes down the stairs, surprised and exhausted at the sight of Leo. The boy had broken into the precinct multiple times to run tests on samples he had collected at the crime scene, hacked their databases, and tried to steal their gear.

He was spending more energy on this case than  _ they  _ were.

Leo keeps shouting obscenities at whatever officers can hear him until the Chief drags him into an empty interrogation room.

“Kid, I know you’re upset-”

Leo scoffs but the sadness blooms in his chest anyway. Piper and Jason are the only people in this life who care about him, and now…

Now he’s never going to see them again. Now they might be dead, or worse. Is there anything worse than death? Leo doesn’t want them to find out, even if there is.

“You don’t know anything,” Leo says quietly. He folds his hands, fiddles with the buttons on his oversized army jacket, and picks his nails. Nervous energy winds all around him, even more so than usual. “You don’t know  _ anything  _ about what I’m feeling right now.”

The Chief rushes into the chair and takes off his hat to reveal a gray, balding head. “Then tell me, Leo. It’s a cold case, and I’ve been assigned a robbery for now, but maybe we can work something out-”

“No!” Leo feels tears sting his eyes before they fall. He wipes them away with a calloused hand. “It’s just...Piper and Jason are really important to me. If you leave this, they could be...they could be-”

The young boy stops himself. His brown eyes take on a glassy, sorrowful sheen. The Chief wishes there was more he could do for him, but there isn’t.

“I’m sorry,” the man says softly. “But this is out of my hands.”

Leo nods. He plays the part of the sorrowful child overtaken by emotion and he follows the Chief to his car and lets him drive him all the way back to the boarding school.

What the bumbling chief doesn’t know is that Leo had grabbed some things from the precinct. A little bit of sleight of the hand you learn from years in the system aided the young boy. Leo walks out of the Chief of Police’s car with a broken, discarded shotgun, heavy-duty rope, and multiple dilapidated devices.

They look worn down and useless, but Leo knows exactly how to craft them for his plan. He doesn’t know how to get Jason and Piper back, but he does know that he’ll need some things to get a step closer. He can’t trust the police department because of their terrible incompetence, but he can trust himself. 

If there’s one thing Leo’s learned, it’s that if you want something done right, you _ always _ have to do it yourself.

* * *

Leo opens his window at exactly one twenty-three AM. 

It’s not like he can sleep, so the late time isn’t foreign to him. His room is on the middle level of the Wilderness School, which doesn’t do anything for convenience, but it has to be done.

He feels the light breeze on his face, gently tousling his curly brown hair. The first rule of heights is to never look down so that’s exactly what Leo does.

A tentative glance at the distance between himself and the ground below makes him gulp. He’s suddenly becoming aware of his own mortality, of every organ keeping him alive that could go  _ splat  _ on the pavement. His bones ache in protest as he kneels on the window sill.

Leo isn’t going to straight-up jump though, that would be incredibly stupid (something  _ Jason  _ would do and survive. He has a grappling hook.

The device is simple. A coil of heavy-duty rope that should hold his weight is compressed inside a hand-fitted gun. The scuffed black metal of the gun Leo fitted the rope and hook into was from a discarded shotgun Leo nabbed from the precinct.

It worked in his trials a couple of hours ago. It should work fine. Theoretically. Hopefully. 

Leo’s window doesn’t offer much of a view. There’s just the other building for the boarding school right across from it. An unsightly red brick wall that desperately needs a power clean. If Leo cranes his neck, he can see a blue stain on a spot on the wall. Maybe it's a slushy, maybe slime, maybe it’s something Leo shouldn’t focus on.

He inhales and exhales slowly, aiming for the top of the other building. He tries to push away the imminent threat of death as his finger ghosts the trigger. 

“ _ Ave Maria _ ,” he mumbles. Then he presses the trigger. He has a split second delay to kick the window down shut before he has to squeeze his eyes shut and stifle a scream as the grapple hook shoots him to the roof.

For a second, Leo’s weightless. He can’t feel anything under his shoes and he’s  _ convinced  _ he’s about to die. This was a terrible idea and now he’s never going to find Jason and Piper and they’ll find his body and rule that a cold case too and then-

Then there’s the side of a building smacking into his ribs. It stings, which means he still has his nerve endings, which means he isn’t lying on the floor like an unfortunate pancake. Leo’s muscles ache as he dangles off the side of the building. He’s alive.

Leo almost whoops for joy until he remembers that he’s actively dangling off the side of a building. His muscles burn as he uses years of public school gym class to pull himself up to the top of the roof. His fingernails scrap raw against the brick but he manages to get himself on top of the building.

Leo gazes around. It’s a perfect square according to his mental calculations, a hundred feet? Definitely more than that but less than three hundred, too. He’s dizzy and can’t properly calculate at the moment.

He can feel the ground under his feet, so he stomps for good measure. Leo begins to smile, wider and wider until any onlooker might think he's crazy. Pure joy runs through his veins at the small success. He might have even whooped had  his stomach not flipped, causing him to hurl off the side of the building.

It’s disgusting, but it’s another reminder that he’s alive. His heart is still pumping in his chest, he might survive to graduate middle school. 

The happy thought is dampened by the faces of Jason and Piper. He might survive to graduate, but Jason and Piper might not if he doesn't hurry. So he needs to get up, hurry up, be strong. For them.

* * *

Jason’s pretty sure he got separated from Piper.

How long has it been? A week? Two? The rough-handed woman who took them had kept blindfolds over their eyes ever since they had gotten here. The darkness had  _ terrified  _ him because he didn’t know where Piper was or if she’d be okay. When someone had snatched him from the cold room and placed him in a comfortably backed chair, Jason hadn’t even had time to warn Piper.

Someone is rubbing a cold wipe on a spot on his arm. Jason knows they’re trying to inject something in him, it’s right over a vein. He tries to jerk his arm away but the hand, which is covered by a rubber glove, holds onto him fast.

“This will only hurt a little,” a smooth voice says. “But it will hurt more if you keep struggling, so I suggest you calm down.”

“Stop it,” Jason grunts. He keeps pulling away and starts to scream. “Somebody help! Hel-”

He’s cut off by a sharp slap to his cheek. It stings like all hell, the rubber adding to that effect. Jason’s silenced. He’s never been  _ slapped  _ before.

Two seconds later, there’s duct tape over his mouth. The loss of his voice along with his vision makes Jason feel like a conscious corpse. He’s helpless to the prick of a needle in his skin, something that makes him slightly wince. What kid likes getting their shots?

“Do you feel anything?” The smooth voice asks him. Jason hopes he can convey all the snark he’s feeling in the way he turns his head toward the voice.  _ I can’t answer that, you duct taped my mouth _ .

“Apologies,” the voice mutters. They roughly pull off the tape from Jason’s mouth. Jason licks his lips, shakes his head. His head feels weird, like someone is pumping gas into it. It leaves him with whiplash, and the desperate need for a sip of water.

When he opens his mouth to respond, Jason is taken aback by a sudden awareness of. . .  _ everything _ .

Not really everything, but the  _ space  _ between everything. It's like he's opening another set of eyes. 

He feels the space between his fingers, the air underneath the floor, all around the room. The presence of the administrator of the shot is like a glaring red sign to someone seeing color for the first time. There’s a big chasm in between them. No, not a chasm, a  _ void _ . There’s a  _ void  _ all around the room. Something actively moving all around him. It’s magnetic, it’s pulling, it’s  _ pressure _ .

Jason shakes his head again, hoping the feeling will go away. It feels like getting a new prescription, but he’s not sure if he can ever get used to this.

He shivers. “What-what did you do to me?”

The mysterious person is smiling, he doesn’t know how he knows that but he  _ does _ . 

“What do you feel, Jason?” The person asks. Jason starts.

“How do you know my name?”

“Do you feel any different?”

Jason doesn’t know. One second he’s shivering, the next he’s boiling. There’s pressure, squeezing  _ him _ , squeezing  _ everything _ . It’s stifling, choking, because Jason can feel something pushing every surface in the room, like an extension of himself.

He doesn’t  _ feel  _ different, Jason  _ is  _ different. 

His moment of wondering is cut off by a sudden splitting pain in his head. It attacks his brain and forces his jaw wide open so he can let out a blood-curdling scream. Caught up in the pain, Jason almost misses the peculiar sound.

He's not the only person in that room screaming.


	3. the magic of a taser and a kid genius

The only clue Leo has is Piper’s nasty nail polish.

His best friend has the bad habit of biting her nails, as a result, she purchased poop flavored nail polish so she’d stop. Leo distinctly remembers Piper almost vomiting in English when she forgot she had it on and bit her nails.

The only special thing about that nail polish other than its apparently horrendous taste is the  _ signature  _ it gives off.

Leo had taken the wiring, casing, and inner workings of devices from the nuclear forensics department in the precinct. He had tinkered with them for a couple hours and made it work similar to a signature tracking device. 

He had broken into Piper’s room before he left the school and dropped a sample of her nail polish in her device. The invention would track the signature unique to Piper’s nail polish, beeping louder and faster the closer he got. It’s like a mechanical bloodhound.

Leo eyes a shady guy smoking a cigarette as he passes another alley. He’s been walking for hours, and the sky is starting to lighten. His “bloodhound” keeps beeping, a little bit faster, so he must be on the right track.

It’s not until Leo’s right outside an unfamiliar neighborhood that he realizes; Jason and Piper might not even be in the state and he’s a thirteen-year-old kid who can’t drive.

He can’t drive and his friends might not even be in the  _ state _ .

Hopelessness crawls up his throat as his brain dwells on the possibility. If he goes to the police, he’s going to have to face some consequences for stealing their stuff and he’s not very into that. They’re also going to blow him off, like they always have. If he goes to a teacher, they’ll just call him crazy like they  _ always  _ do.

Leo is completely alone.

Still, he keeps walking. It’s not like he has any other choice  _ but  _ to keep walking because he’s the only person looking for them. 

He tries to imagine their pain. Leo takes the aching in his chest, the one that threatens to swallow him every day they’re gone, then he multiplies by the thousands. 

All of a sudden, he feels dizzy. Leo quickly finds a building to lean against, his breathing coming out in short, frantic puffs. His world tilts for a second before he hears Piper’s voice in his head.

_ Breathe _ , her voice says. He can imagine her pearly white teeth, with blue bands on her braces, grinning.  _ Everything’s gonna be alright. Bob Marley style. _

Jason would smile cryptically and pull Leo into a hug. Leo would scowl but not pull away.

Their voices are beside him, in front of him, in his head. Their smiles, laughter, jokes. Piper and Jason aren’t dead but the possibility that they might be overwhelms him. It washes over him like a tide.

A car begins to honk. Leo screws his eyes shut, gripping his invention and willing the car to shut up. 

It keeps honking.

Leo cracks open an eyelid, curiosity overpowering his downward spiral. 

There’s a guy in an ugly brown car watching him. He might be a senior in high school or a college freshman. He has dark brown skin and a mild afro. He’s staring at him wide-eyed and interested. If Leo shifts, he can see an African-American girl with curly auburn-red hair and paint smudges all over her freckled face. She’s probably the same age as him.

They are still watching him as he turns to leave. His device begins to beep again, sensing his movement. He continues across the road, and begins to approach an alley. 

“Stop!”

The voice calling out behind him is feminine and young.  _ Really  _ young. It’s probably the girl from the car, but Leo ignores her and begins to walk faster.

“I’m not going to hurt you,’ she says. Her footsteps don’t move any nearer, which is good because Leo has a taser in his pocket.

“I think I can help you.” The girl makes a wrong move, then. She dares to take a step closer.

Leo whips around with his taser aimed directly at her heart. The girl’s eyes widen as she raises her hands up in defense. She’s a couple feet away from him, and no taller than he is. 

“Listen to me,” she begs. Leo raises an eyebrow and looks around. The late hour offers complete silence and privacy. Nobody’s up this late (or early) in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Nevada. He nods wordlessly, beckoning her to speak.

“My friend in the car, Grover, recognized your device,” she gestures with her chin in the car’s direction. “He said it’s a tracker. He’s good with techy stuff like that. I just wanted to check on you cause it’s late and your device is obviously hand-made.”

Skepticism lifts Leo’s brow. “This is kind of convenient, huh?” He scoffs, not falling for the Good Samaritan act. “A kidnapper’s accomplice just  _ checks  _ on a kid in the streets.”

The girl shakes her head. “It’s not like that, I promise.”

“Prove it.”

“I’m _ getting there _ .”

Leo’s arm starts to ache, but he doesn’t dare set down the taser. It could be the only thing preventing this girl and her friend from hurting him. The redheaded girl continues to talk.

Her eyebrows meet in the center. Her eyes meet Leo’s inquiringly.

“Do you know who Jason Grace and Piper McLean are?” She asks him. Leo’s world tips once again at the sound of their names. He sucks in a breath, holds it, then releases.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “They’re my best friends.”

The girl smiles, then. It’s a mysterious yet gleeful smile, one that puts Leo at ease and tenses him up at the same time.

“Great!” She exclaims. “My name’s Rachel, and I think I can help you find them.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


They finally took the blindfolds off.

Piper squints against the bright lights. It’s probably been weeks since she’s seen a single color, or a flash of light.

The setting doesn’t make the transition easier. She’s in a cold room, all alone. There’s a glass window on the other side, but she can’t see who’s watching her. The tiles, walls, and ceiling are all a pristine white. The lights are installed into the ceiling and glaring down on her so much she’s developing a headache. 

Her eyes are smarting and her throat is dry. Her limbs ache from lack of use, and her heart hurts for her loved ones.

Leo must be worried sick, her  _ dad  _ must be worried sick. Jason is somewhere in this building, and Piper doesn’t know where he is.

An eerie feeling creeps up her spine, immediately followed by panic.

“Where am I?” Piper demands. Her voice wobbles, her stomach growls. She frantically struggles to get up from the chair, but it’s bolted to the floor and her body is strapped to it.

“Who are you?!” She screams again, her throat only getting hoarser. “Where’s Jason?! Where did you take us?”

Nobody answers.

There’s a click overhead, then a staticky sound. Piper cringes.

“Do you feel different?” A rough voice asks. It reminds her of the rough handed woman. She stays quiet.

“Piper,” the voice coos. “It would do you well to answer my question.”

She spits on the floor.

The voice sighs. “If you want to see Jason, I suggest you answer quickly, child.”

While her vision is tinted red with rage and hopelessness, Piper listens to the overhead woman’s voice. She hears the cold, detached stone that makes up her pitch. She heard the waiver of impatience when Piper resisted.

Even deeper, Piper hears vibrations. When the woman speaks, there’s a low buzz that Piper later learns is only audible to her ears. 

“Do you feel different?” The overhead voice speaks again, and Piper winces. This voice is new and higher pitched. To her, it screams bloody murder.

Part of her realizes this isn’t normal.

When Piper opens her mouth to answer, she can feel the hum in her throat before she even utters a word. Her mind wanders back to the shrill-voiced person over the PA system. She looks around the solitary box of white that acts as her prison and deduces that the people on the other side want something from her. Whatever it is, she isn’t going to give it to them.

“No,” she lies.

She can hear hushed voices outside the glass, something she’s never been able to do before. There’s a pause, a long one. When the woman finally speaks, her voice is monotone and bland.

“What a shame,” the woman says simply. Piper frowns.

“That’s it?” She blurts out. “Aren’t you gonna...I don’t know, ask me more questions?”

Piper’s met by silence. A curl of disappointment goes through her. She doesn’t know what she expected, but maybe something a little more climactic?

Piper’s hearing seems to sharpen the longer she spends with her senses about her. A crackle emitted by the overhead lights is the only noise in the room for a long time. She tries to tune it out until the sign that the other side is listening fills her ears, the soft click. 

There’s a sound like a tuning fork filling her ears. Piper shifts uncomfortably in the chair she’s strapped to. She shakes her head, hoping to clear it, but it doesn’t go away. It’s reminiscent of the painful sound that filled her ears after getting the shot, right before she got separated from Jason.

She looks around the room, her matted hair hits her ears and almost knocks the wind out of her. It shouldn’t be so  _ loud _ . Nothing should be so loud. 

The crackly sound of the lights and her heartbeat fills her ears. Piper strains to tune it out, but that only makes it worse.

“What did you do to me?” Piper chokes back a sob. Her voice echoes along the white walls. The voices on the other side swell in noisy murmurs. She reaches up to block her ears to no avail.

“Tell me!” She screams. Her throat aches in protest but she pours her pain into her words. The voices silence. Piper tilts her head, her breakdown halting for curiosity.

Questions flash through her mind at fifty miles a minute. Why would they expect something to be different about her? Was it the shot they gave her? Most importantly, where is Jason and what have they done to him?

Then the voice comes on, robotic once again, and it begins to tell her everything.


	4. the universe works in mysterious ways

“How do you guys know who I am?” Leo finally asks. 

They’ve been driving for well over an hour, frequently having to turn back or change directions due to Leo’s tracker not functioning as a GPS. The only thing they’ve told him are their names and ages, Rachel is fourteen and Grover is eighteen.

“I already told you,” Rachel repeats herself for the third time. “Your case and Grover’s friends’ case are really similar. I saw footage of you in the station and then-”

“How?” Leo demands. According to them, they’re from New York. How would this weird girl see footage from a local police station in Nevada? Why would they fly almost across the country for him? He has so many questions, but Rachel and Grover are answering so few of them.

Grover glances at him in the rearview mirror. “We just... _ did _ , alright?”

Leo studies him for a moment. The way a muscle jumps in his cheek indicates annoyance, but his eyebrows are furrowed and he grips the steering wheel extra hard. There’s also a cooling resolve in Grover that Leo recognizes. He’s worried about someone.

“Who are you looking for?” Leo asks him. His invention beeps louder when he points it forward, so they keep driving.

“How do you know I’m looking for someone?” Grover deflects. 

Leo rolls his eyes at the lame attempt. “Because you made it super obvious,” 

With a sigh, Grover begins to focus on the road again. “My friend, Percy. He went missing along with his friend Annabeth. We tried talking to the NYPD, but they just ranked it as a cold case after a week.”

“Same with my friends,” Leo replies. He searches for a common pattern as he points to an exit. “That way, and sorry for interrupting.”

“It’s fine,” Grover says, the beginning of a smile on his lips. “We were getting hot dogs from a stand on the day they disappeared. One minute they were there, the next they were... _ gone _ .”

He feels really sorry for the guy. Grover seems to have run himself ragged looking for them. Everything about his countenance screams exhaustion, from his sagging shoulders to his tired eyes and dull skin. Leo awkwardly pats him on the shoulder.

“I…” he struggles to find the right words. “Um, the exact same thing happened to my friends, Jason and Piper. I turned around to take a picture of a weird racoon, then they were gone. I tried talking to the local police but they were complete  _ idiots  _ so I snuck out of school tonight to look.”

Leo regrets ever turning around for the stupid creature in the first place. Maybe if he had kept his focus for once, his friends wouldn’t be missing. Maybe he could have protected them, maybe he’d be with them. Hypotheticals and regret stab at his gut and prick his eyes.

But it’s fine. He’ll find them. He has to.

“Do you know Percy and Annabeth, too?” Leo asks Rachel. The redhead averts his gaze sheepishly.

“No.”

“Do you know Grover?”

Grover and Rachel exchange a glance as Leo peers at them from the backseat. Something is off, he can tell.

“Wait a minute,” his device beeps louder when he points it to the right, so Grover goes down another exit. “Are you  _ actually  _ doing this out of the kindness of your heart, because that’s pretty pathetic if you are.”

Rachel isn’t fazed. “It’s complicated.”

“The only thing I’ve dealt with in the last two weeks is complicated,” Leo scoffs. “Try me.”

Rachel twists to face him, a smirk curling her lips. “Fine. I have superpowers.”

There’s a pause on Leo’s part. Nothing crosses his mind for a full five minutes. He stares at Rachel dead in the eye, a small part of him noting the nervous way her lips purse.

Then he bursts into laughter.

Full, clutching his stomach, tears in the eyes, laughter. 

Rachel frowns at him as he cackles in the backseat. He opens an eye and smiles condescendingly.

“Sure you do.” He teases, his voice lilting in a sigh. He goes back to his invention, giving directions to Grover.

“She’s not lying,” Grover murmurs. “How do you think she found you? Magic?”

Leo rolls his eyes. “I’d believe magic over freaking superpowers.”

Rachel mirrors his expression, a flash of annoyance crosses her face. “Magic and powers are the same thing.”

“Which is exactly why neither of them exist.”

Rachel scoffs and turns in her seat, Leo hums pleasantly. Grover glances at the two preteens, trying to gauge the right thing to do as the adult in the situation.

“Leo,” he says patiently. “Maybe you should listen to Rachel, to see what she’s talking about.”

Leo doesn’t look up from his device as he directs Grover out of the highway and into a wooded area. The trees cast dappled shadows in the car. His device is beeping so loudly, someone in the other car glances at them. 

“Go on,” he mumbles. The redhead takes a deep breath.

“All my life, I’ve been able to see visions playing out in my head.” Her green eyes take on a strange sheen as she speaks. A mixture of apprehension and wonder laces her tone. “They usually come to pass, but when they don’t it’s because they happened  _ before _ . I don’t know why, but it only happens at certain times and places and people.” 

Leo’s eyebrows furrow as she continues. It sounds like she can access time, but that’s impossible. As unbelievable as it sounds, though, he watches her face as she talks and it’s all sincerity.

“I passed by Grover near the NYPD station and got a vision of him talking about Percy and Annabeth’s disappearance. He was trying to get the officer to listen to him, but he just blew him off. I offered to help him because...well, because I  _ can _ .” 

“When he took me to where Percy and Annabeth disappeared, I saw a vision of us standing near a steel mill in Arizona with some kid with a device. We were talking to  _ you _ .”

Her words make Leo catch his breath. They’re on their way to Arizona already. He can’t do much, but he can at least predict the path his tracker is taking him to.

Part of him wants to pick Rachel’s brain for any more clues or an exact location. Anything that can get him to Jason and Piper quicker.

“Can you do it now?” Leo asks her. She looks a bit annoyed at the question.

“If I could do it on command, don’t you think I already would have?” Rachel snaps. Leo raises his hands in defense, similar to the way Rachel did when he pointed a taser at her. He keeps quiet for a moment, mulling the possibilities over.

Skepticism wars with hope, cold logic with the belief that maybe there is something extraordinary. The engineer in him is staring at the evidence of such a thing, a girl with freckles, brown skin, and curly red hair.

Still, there’s a shred of disbelief.   


“That sounds like a terrible cover story for a stalker,” he deadpans. Rachel makes an angry sound and raises her hands to the roof of the car.

“Dude,  _ why  _ would I lie?”

“So your friend can kidnap me and sell me to an organ harvesting farm while you both reap the profits of my sacrifice.”

“Hey!” Grover protests. “I would never do something like that!”

Leo huffs and slouches in the backseat. It’s around four AM now, and his invention won’t shut up. “Keep talking.”

Rachel peers at him strangely before she continues. “When I saw you walking on the street, I had a vision of you at a precinct. You were begging for Jason and Piper the same way Grover was for Percy and Annabeth. I noticed the cases are the exact same thing, just different locations. I made Grover stop the car to talk to you and now, here we are.” She stares at him with hazel green eyes. “And  _ that’s  _ the truth.”

Leo turns over her story in his mind. It sounds fake. It sounds  _ really  _ fake. Maybe Rachel is just a master liar, but she looks genuine. There are undertones of fear in her voice, like she’s never gone this far with her ability.

When he looks up from his device, they’re out of the forest and a charged silence has fallen over the car. Rachel stares out the window and Grover appears to be holding back tears.

“Percy and Annabeth must be really special,” Leo says quietly. At the names, Grover smiles a little bit.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “They are. I’ve known Annabeth since she was seven, and Percy since he was in middle school. We’re family friends. His mom is worried sick about him and I promised her I’d find them.”

He trails off, something Leo understands. He promised himself that he would find Jason and Piper. For the past two weeks, it’s only been failure after failure. Every day that they’re gone, the possibility that they’re dead increases and Leo doesn’t know what he’d do after that.

Leo leans his head against the window and watches the world wake up. He’s so close he can taste it. Jason and Piper are finally within his reach, and it’s the closest they ever have been.

_ I’m on my way, guys _ , he thinks.  _ I’m coming. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


Three hours later, they enter the middle of nowhere.

Rachel gets out of the car, putting on a pair of sunglasses against the morning sun. She hands Leo a pair and surveys the abandoned town.

There’s nobody. No cars, no sounds, nothing except a steel mill half a hundred feet away from them that’s probably abandoned. 

Leo looks around worriedly. He had a foster home in Arizona, and being in the state still gives him nerves.

“Are we in the right place?” He asks. Grover moves to stand beside them.

“I don’t know,” the older boy shrugs. “Ask your machine thing.”

Leo’s invention has been beeping like crazy. It’s so loud, he has to stuff it at the bottom of his backpack to slightly muffle the sound. Leo takes a couple steps toward the mill, and the thing goes  _ crazy _ .

“Yeah,” he nods at his device but speaks to the two people behind him. “Yeah, we’re in the right place.”

“That’s the mill from my vision,” Rachel only proves his theory. Leo still can’t believe she has powers, and he can’t quite wrap his mind around how it’s possible. 

Grover nervously shifts his weight from foot to foot. He gnaws on his lip and a million other nervous ticks he’s developed in two weeks. 

“What are we up against?” He asks worriedly. “Whoever took Percy and Annabeth must be dangerous, how are we even gonna get them?”

Leo pulls out his taser and his grapple hook. “We’re gonna have to hope we get lucky.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Grover protests. “We already did the heavy lifting, all they have to do is get them out of there.”

The smaller boy rolls his eyes at Grover. He sends him an icy look.

“If the police couldn’t be bothered to find them, do you really think they’ll be bothered to get them? We came all this way, I’m not just gonna let them take credit for the crap I went through to find my friends.”

The vitriol in his voice surprises Leo himself. Grover blinks at him and Rachel makes an awkward face. Leo coughs.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. Grover smiles graciously and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re all stressed out right now, all we have to do is...hope nobody has a gun.”

“I really think we should let somebody experienced handle this,” Rachel murmurs. Leo shoots her a glare, one she returns with just as much venom.

“No.” His voice comes out weathered and tired. He scrubs a hand over his face. “We’re already here, we might as well go in.”

With that, he storms in the direction of the steel mill, standing tall and glaring silver against the bright blue sky.


	5. run like the devil's chasing you

_ Four more kids. _

_ Steel mill in Arizona. _

_ Experimentation. _

_ Second stage. _

* * *

Piper runs down the twisting turns of the massive steel mill. She doesn’t know how, but when she told them to tell her everything, they did. Then, when she told them to let her go...they did. When she told them to tell her where Jason is, they did. When she told them to tie themselves to the legs of her newly freed chair, they also did that.

She doesn’t have much time before they discover whatever she did. Even Piper’s confused. How could she just tell them to do things and they do it? They’re adults and she’s just a little eighth grader.

So many questions, so little time. Piper doesn’t know if she can keep searching like this. Her chest wants to collapse in on itself, her throat is dry from only a couple cups of water in the past couple days. She’s still disoriented from spending two weeks tied up in utter darkness.

She just needs to find Jason and those other kids before the scientists find her.

The room in the back, that’s where they said Jason and all the other kids are being held for further testing. Piper sprints down the dimmed pristine hallways. The dust in the air clings to her skin, hair, and shoes. 

Piper guesses that they’re in a renovated basement due to the modern arrangement of the hallways and the dust falling from the roof. Abandoned steel mills don’t have tiled floors, clear windows, and state of the art technology. Not unless someone took time to reconfigure the area.

The lights are out in the hallway Piper turns to. Doors line both walls, and there’s a single, white, door at the end. As she jogs down the hall, she sees empty rooms. She sweeps her finger over the sill of a window. Dust.

She reaches the door at the end of the hallway and joggles the golden doorknob. It’s locked. Right above her eye level, there’s a keypad with a speaker at the bottom. The screen flashes a message:

**CONFIRM VOICE IDENTIFICATION OF “DR. GAEA CRAIG”**

She must be the head scientist. Piper quickly looks around to make sure nobody is following her. Nerves explode in her heart. She’s so close to Jason, to Leo, to being  _ free _ , she can’t get stumped by a stupid voice ID.

The rough voice of a woman pops up in her head. It’s a reach, but maybe Gaea Craig is the rough-voiced woman. Piper hears the hum of the older woman’s vocal chords in her mind, the gravelly breathy way she spoke. 

For some reason, Piper doesn’t only know exactly what her voice sounds like, she knows the mechanisms behind them. The way Leo knows machines, she knows the voices she’s heard in the past two weeks.

Piper keeps Gaea’s voice in her ears. She feels her vocal chords adjust, and it sends a fearful shiver down her spine. The next words don’t come out in her young voice, they sound rough and weathered, exactly like the rough handed woman’s.

“Confirm,” Piper says in Gaea’s voice. There’s a muffled click from inside the hollow door, then it slowly releases.

Piper stuffs down her fear for when she can afford it and pushes open the door. There is the banging sound of running footsteps above her, she doesn’t have much time before they find her.

“Please,  _ please _ , don’t let them find me” she whispers. 

When she turns on the lights, there are four chairs, but only three forms. They’re all slumped in a state of unconsciousness. Piper recognizes one with blond hair and a tall, lanky form.  _ Jason _ .

He’s blindfolded and pale, duct tape covers his mouth. The same is for the other four kids. Quickly, she moves to check his pulse. Before her hand touches his wrist, she can hear it. She can hear four heartbeats in sync with her own but she can only see three people. Piper strains against the deafening beat, takes a deep breath, and slaps him awake.

When she pulls off the blindfold and duct tape and he’s staring at her like he can hardly believe she’s there. Piper aches to hug him and, for the first time, she wants to be at Wilderness School. 

She doesn’t have time for sentimentality, though, because there’s muffled shouting above her and it’s going to take twenty minutes she doesn’t have to untie everybody.

“Piper, oh my gosh, y-you’re alive!” His awe-struck voice is raspy from lack of use. Piper nods.

“Yeah, now help me untie these kids. Jason, we gotta get out of here before-”

The sound of footsteps echoes in the hallway. Piper’s eyes trail out the door, where a woman with pale skin, gray hair, and a gun is sprinting towards them. Her eyes widen.

“Jason, close the door.”

He’s already moving before she even says anything. Piper almost sighs in relief until she remembers the keypad.

Hopelessness wraps its cold fingers around her heart as the possibility of never seeing Leo and her dad again becomes real. 

The situation is impossible, the odds are stacked against her. How are two thirteen year olds supposed to transport three kids they don’t know out of an unfamiliar facility in an unfamiliar state?

The other kids are coming to. There’s a boy with brown skin, curly black hair, and green eyes. A little girl, no older than eleven, blinks sleep out of her big, brown eyes. Her curly hair is in a state of dusty disarray. The other boy, the tallest out of all of them, has black hair shaved into a buzzcut and chubby cheeks.

“ _ Annabeth _ ,” is the first word out of the green-eyed boy’s mouth. Piper furrows her eyebrows, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

“I’m right here,” a voice says. Piper flinches in surprise as she finishes untying the green-eyed boy’s ankles.

Jason’s eyes bug at the door as someone pounds on the wood. It should be impossible for him to keep one of the scientists out. Even without all the weight they’ve lost in the last two weeks, a thirteen year old is no match for a fully grown adult.

“No offense,” he shouts. “But we don’t really have much time to talk to voices!”

“No,” the voice says. It’s girly and young, but there’s a tinge of annoyance. “I’m literally sitting in this seat. You,” she pauses. Piper almost feels like someone is pointing at her. “You forgot to untie me."

Piper’s eyes follow the voice to the third chair. There can’t be a person in that chair, it’s impossible…

But, then again, so is a girl who can control people with her voice, hear things she shouldn’t be able to, and mimic other voices.

“Annabeth?” The boy with green eyes reaches a freed hand to the seat. His hand stops right in mid-air. “Wait, are you  _ invisib- _ ”

The question is interrupted by a click at the door. The small dark-skinned girl with curly hair whimpers, and the chubby Asian boy wraps an arm around her protectively. 

When the door swings open, Jason is staring down the barrel of a gun. Gaea’s eyes sweep across the room before finally landing on Piper.

“Spectacular attempt, Ms. McLean,” her gravelly voice drawls, “but there won’t be a next time.”

Scientists shuffle into the room again, armed with tasers and shotguns. Each kid in the room backs away with their hands up, except one. It’s the boy with green eyes, and they’re flashing dangerously. 

When he lifts his hand, the ground begins to rumble. Piper’s arms come out to steady herself but her eyes follow his movements. He clenches his fist and a fissure opens in the ground, swallowing up a man in a white coat. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Piper watches in horror as the boy’s eyes glaze over in the euphoria of power. The shaking in the ground intensifies, the roof rains dust and chalky material.

Gaea shouts orders and shoots blindly. Chunks of the roof fall haphazardly, revealing the steel mill above. Frozen, Piper watches as she aims her gun at the boy’s head. 

It seems to happen in slow motion. Gaea pulls the trigger. The voice of the Invisible Girl screams a name,  _ Percy _ , as the bullet flies through the air.

Then everything stops.

Things begin to crawl in real time. Every scientist, even Gaea, is frozen in their previous positions.

Right on cue, the green eyed boy, Percy, gasps for air. His feet hover mere inches off the ground and veins bulge through his forehead. 

Percy’s head turns to survey the damage, a deep look of regret briefly ingrained in his features. He opens his mouth to say something just as a small dart appears in the side of his neck.

At the same time Percy’s eyes roll into the back of his head and he crumples to the floor, Piper turns behind her.

There stands Leo Valdez, with a dart gun, a grapple hook, and a sheepish smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> really short chapter haha sorry T-T pls ask questions if ur confused!


	6. time stops but life goes on

It’s silent.

The terrible, terrible sound of the building coming down halts with the march of time.

Jason doesn’t even notice how heavily he breathes. His brain is still struggling to catch up to recent events. He’s not even sure he wants it to.

Slowly, he takes in the scene.

There are ugly fissures in the grey linoleum floor where the boy named Percy had split it. Where golden pieces of dust from the hole in the roof had floated, they are now frozen in place. 

He steps over debris, to examine the unusual circumstance of being frozen in time. A wooden chair one of the kids had been tied to was right in the middle of a fall. A splinter of wood floats in the air like a fossil. 

The humans are the scariest part. Gaea’s expression isn’t angry. It’s not desperate, nor does it convey any emotion any person of sane origins would be feeling.

She’s smiling.

Jason shivers at the stiff air. He had gotten used to the way the air moved around him in the last week. The stillness of the air and no sign of pressure makes him uncomfortable. This must be what normal people feel.

“Why would you do that?!” The disembodied voice shouts at Leo. Leo looks around for the voice, and is unpleasantly surprised when he gets pinched by seemingly nothing.

“Is this place haunted,” the Mexican boy mutters. “Because a voice is very mad at me and I don’t know why.”

He still goes on to explain himself. “He was going to bring the building down, so sue me for giving him a _tiny_ sedative.”

At the word “sedate”, Jason flinches. The scientists who had poked and prodded at him had not used sedatives sparingly. It’s the barest flicker of a moment, but Leo notices anyway. 

Leo clears his throat and wipes his hands on his pants. There’s a girl with freckles, dark brown skin and red curly hair who waves awkwardly. Beside her, stands an older guy with brown skin and an Afro who looks like he’s about to puke.

The older guy runs over to where Percy’s body has been dragged against the wall by Piper and the invisible girl. His mouth presses into a grim line.

“Where’s Annabeth?” He asks. Jason opens his mouth to answer, but the invisible girl beats him to the punch.

“I’m right here, Grover,” the voice of Annabeth whispers. Grover gapes in the direction of her voice.

“Wait, where  _ are  _ you?” He demands. “And-and what happened to Percy?!”

The kid with the buzz cut shrugs. It’s the most emotion Jason has seen from him in the maybe fifteen minutes since Piper burst into their cell and woke them all up from their drugged sleep.

“Hey guys,” the red haired girl says nervously. “Um, I’m Rachel. I’m the one who did the time pause thing. I have powers too, so...that’s nice.”

Jason waves back absentmindedly. The smallest girl in the room blinks at her. Piper murmurs something.

It takes two seconds of silence for everybody to process the extraordinary events that have just taken place. It takes two seconds before Jason can finally face Leo.

His best friend has bags under his eyes. Heavy bags. His curly hair hangs limp and dull, something Jason never thought he would expect from a person so full of life. His brown eyes still shine with mischief, one of the things that drew Jason to him in sixth grade.

Leo meets his gaze, his lips quirking into a smile.

“Hey, Jas—”

He doesn’t let him finish. The preteen just wraps Leo into a tight hug, the tears he’s been holding in finally escape.

Piper sees them and crosses the distance in two steps. She wraps her arms around them and sobs into Leo’s shoulder. She can’t find the energy to hold in her fatigue anymore.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Jason chokes out. Leo pulls back to examine the tired faces of his best friends, then covers it with a smirk.

“I know I didn’t almost die trying to find you guys just for you to say that,” Leo jokes. Jason laughs wetly, pulling Piper into a long overdue hug. They both need it.

“Okay, I really hate to break this up-” Rachel interrupts, her fingers pointed at Grover, Percy and the two silent kids. “-but the car isn't big enough for all of us.”

* * *

Leo watches in amazement as Piper whispers into each scientist’s ear.

Rachel’s anxiety induced time lapse had since faded. Him, Jason, and Piper chose to stay behind as insurance the scientists couldn’t come after then again.

Or, that’s what they told everybody. Leo knows they just can’t be separated again after this nightmare.

Leo still doesn’t understand why this happened, he still wants to know  _ why  _ it happened. Everything is moving so quickly, he needs a moment to process, theorize, and figure out what went down and why.

His best friends got kidnapped along with four other children to get experimented on. Jason and Piper, two normal kids who go to a boarding school in Nevada, were kidnapped for experimentation.

Biologically, it should be impossible. The human body is what the human body is, nothing more, sometimes less. Leo searches for an adequate solution to the enigma of Jason and Piper’s situation, and finds none.

Piper commands each person in the room to forget. To forget the experiment, to forget their names, to forget this steel mill.

She tells them, and they listen.

When Piper finishes the deed, she steps over chunks of debris and looks at her boys nervously. Jason’s shoulder hunch uncharacteristically, Leo sees Piper’s brown eyes well with unshed tears.

Without a word, she grabs their hands and they walk out of the room. They don’t stop walking until they’re out of the dilapidated hallway, out of the steel mill, out of the ghost town. 

Mentally, they’re out of Arizona and not recounting the traumatic event for the local police and FBI. Mentally, they’re not even in Nevada, a place that holds more meaning than they’d like it to. 

They’re somewhere else, somewhere peaceful. Somewhere with a lot of light.

* * *

When they get back to Nevada, Piper’s dad and Jason’s stepmom greet them.

Rachel paid for their plane tickets, something Leo is equally puzzled and grateful for. Honestly, there are many things about Rachel that he doesn’t understand. Like how her parents were perfectly cool with their daughter going on adventures with strangers and how she can control time and see the future.

Leo recalls her mini panic attack when she heard the gunshots, how the green force of energy exploded from her form and encapsulated anybody that wasn’t them. 

The simplest question he has is how she can even afford to pay for five plane tickets, for Leo, Jason, Piper, Frank, and Hazel.

Still, Leo’s thankful.

Tristan McLean is brown skinned, tall, and gorgeous for his age. He crushes all three kids in a tight embrace, shedding many tears at the sight of Piper’s dusty, tear streaked hair and dejected form.

Hera is a bit more graceful, but she still wraps her arms around Jason and promises him motherly things that Leo can’t hear. 

He stands off to the side, savoring the picture of parents who love their kids to death. Part of him yearns for such a bond, but the little whisper in his ear that tells him to keep moving plays its part well. 

He’s about to turn to go, to keep moving, when Jason’s voice calls out his name.

“Where are you going?” The blond boy teases. A spark of him, the blond boy who plays baseball, gets suspended for fighting bullies, loves PopTarts with all his heart, and is still only thirteen years old, peeks through his tear streaked face. 

Leo shrugs, “I was gonna go back to Wilderness School. Technically, I skipped classes unexcused and I’m kind of looking forward to a quiet detention room.”

Hera frowns at him. “I’ll write a letter to the school. After everything you’ve done, I can’t just leave you in detention, can I?” Her laugh is bright and round. Leo finds himself smiling.

“It was nothing,” he mutters, suddenly bashful at the approval of an adult. “Rachel and Grover did all the work, anyway.”

Jason pouts at him and Leo can’t help but roll his eyes. 

“Hera,” Jason looks at his stepmother. “Can Leo stay with us for a couple days?”

Piper, only a few feet away, glares at Jason from beside her father. “Hey! I was gonna ask first.”

“My house is better.”

“Mine is bigger. Get on my level,  _ peasant _ .”

That does it for Leo. He bursts into a laughter that bubbles from his lips, a kind he hasn’t felt in forever. The past two weeks have been the worst he thinks he’ll ever have in his life but, somehow, Jason and Piper have him thinking of  _ now _ instead of  _ then _ . 

Even with all this uncertainty, with the tangled web of lies and plots they’ve partially uncovered and with Jason and Piper’s powers, now is looking really good.


	7. shadows, ghosts, and the dark they know well

In a newly dilapidated hallway of a seemingly abandoned steel mill, there is a secret stairwell.

If one was to turn just so to the right, a strangely deep shadow for what is assumed to be a dead end would catch their eye. Curiosity would prick at their consciousness, and maybe they would uncover the three flights of stairs that lead even deeper underground.

At the bottom of those stairs, there is a wide, metal door with a touch screen in the center. This screen is engineered only to scan the left iris, the palm, and the voice of Gaea Craig.

Behind that door lies Gaea Craig’s best kept secret: a small, clever girl and a little boy with obsidian eyes.

* * *

When Hylla  Ramírez-Arellano finds the children, something tells her to take them before the cops do.

Admittedly, Hylla does not trust the police, which may have contributed to her fine career in vigilantism, but there is something else in those children. As the little boy quivers in the corner, an unnatural shiver goes down her back. The girl, who has freckled olive skin smeared with dust from the earthquake, steps in front of her brother and puts on a brave face. Hylla notices the shadows on the wall that seem to curl to her form.

These children radiate power, something Hylla desperately needs if she can stop the crime war brewing in New Rome.

“Hey,” the tall Latina woman kneels to face the girl, who is still protecting her brother. She smiles kindly. “My name is Hylla, I think I might be able to help you.”

The room drops a couple degrees, something Hylla almost believes she imagined it. The little girl glares at her.

“We can help ourselves.”

Hylla can’t help but smile at the attempt to be tough. Looking at the little girl, she sees fire and a desire to protect. She sees Reyna.

With a shrug she pretends to get up. “I respect that, kid. What’s your name?”

“Bianca.”

Hylla peers over Bianca’s shoulder at the small boy. “What’s his name?”

“He can talk,” Bianca snaps at her. Her gaze softens as she nods at Nico. “C’mon, Neeks.”

“Nico,” the little boy whispers. He doesn’t meet Hylla’s eyes.

Hylla addresses Bianca again. Despite the girl’s strong resistance, there is a glimmer of interest in her eyes. 

“The cops are here, Bianca,” Hylla tells it to her straight. “When they find you, they’ll put you in the system. You’ll get separated from your brother and you won’t be able to protect him anymore. Do you want that?”

Bianca blinks and glances at her little brother. Hylla can see the gears turning in her young mind.

“No.”

“Then _come with me_ ,” Hylla kneels again, looking Bianca evenly in the eye. “I have a little sister around your age. There’s a public school near us, and I have friends who would love you both.” A flicker of emotion crosses Bianca’s face.  _ She’s got her. _

“Why do you wanna help us?” Bianca asks, crossing her arms. “You don’t even _know_ us.”

Again, Hylla thinks about the state of New Rome. All the major cities in America have seen a deadly rise in crime rates, but New Rome is the worst by far. For decades, New Rome has been known for its corruption and violence. The police are useless and the local government is too concerned with the cash in their pockets to care about the citizens. Robbery, murders, theft, and a billion other things Hylla can’t fight alone reign in the city.

She needs help, the kind that’s more than human.

When she had gotten an alert from a mole in the precinct about a kidnapping, she had immediately traveled to Arizona to examine the case. The police had reported 5 children found, one is still missing. Apparently, nobody had ever bothered to look for these kids.

But Hylla did and, if they have the power she thinks they do, they can save the lives of the millions of people that live in New Rome.

So Hylla meets Bianca’s eyes and shrugs. “You can stay here and wait for the worst to happen, or you can follow me and do some good with your powers.”

Bianca’s lips pull in a frown. “We just want to be safe...no more experiments.”

_ So, that’s how they got their powers. _ Revulsion strikes Hylla at the thought of experimenting on children. She pushes down the emotion and grounds herself in the moment. She nods and holds out a hand to Bianca.

“No more experiments,” she promises. Bianca glances at the older woman’s hand, a million different thoughts running through her mind, all to do with the prospect of “freedom”

It’s not even a decision anymore. She shakes Hylla’s hand.


	8. a leap of faith in a world of fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaay part two! B) we made it this far, babes, and this might be the first long fic i'm finishing akndkanka

Jason discovers what his power is called.

Air pressure generation, all thanks be to the superpower wiki site he spent hours browsing.

Sometimes he feels really cold, then, three days later, they’ll have a cold front. Other times, when he has a bad nightmare or when his anxiety acts up, the lid off the nearest container will fly off. 

Leo says that air pressure is everywhere, touching everything, so Jason kind of has telekinesis. It sounds cool but it’s not so cool when he accidentally traps himself in a wind bubble, or when he breaks Hera’s pots over and over again and has to blame his clumsiness.

Ever since Jason, Leo, and Piper had gotten back to Nevada, Hera has insisted on mothering him. She threatened the school to let Leo and him stay at home and not in dorms, which is totally embarrassing when everybody already thinks he’s a goody-goody. 

Juno monitors him, drives him and Leo to school every day. She even installed  _ trackers  _ in their new phones. She likes to think she knows everything Jason does during the day.

This leaves Jason with the night. The beautiful, freeing, night.

* * *

Piper is used to not being coddled.

Her father is a very in-demand man in Hollywood, which means there’s always a new acting job. He managed to spend three blissful months with her, splitting time in Nevada and their house in LA, before being called back to LA for a role.

“Be careful,” Piper mutters bitterly at breakfast. She’s spending the long weekend at LA with her dad until she needs to go back to Wilderness School. “If you turn your back, I might get snatched away again.”

It’s completely inappropriate, and her therapist says using humor to cope with traumatic experiences is counterproductive, but Piper says it anyway. Her father’s fork stops in midair, the bit of pancake speared through the prongs teeters dangerously.

“Piper,” he says gently. Piper wishes he would stop doing that; stop using the soft “patient” voice and say something real for once. “Pipes, you know I’ll be calling every day.”

The young girl holds back an eye roll as she collects her plate and starts to load the dishwasher. “Dad, you always say that.”

“This time is different.”

“Why?” Piper hums. “Because I got abducted by a psycho lady who had an obsession with middle grade children?”

Tristan cringes in his chair. The reminder of what Piper had been through, what he should have been able to stop, feels like a cut to the heart. 

The two fall into silence up until it’s time for Piper to go to the airport. Her bodyguard, a stocky man named Ryan, waits by the door with her bags. Her dad had hired him a couple days ago, and he acts as the thorn in Piper’s side. 

Ryan follows her everywhere she goes, a loaded gun by his hip for any sign of danger. He sits in the mall cafeteria with her without saying a word, he drives her to places she can walk.

Piper knows that, with just a couple words, she can send Ryan running to the hills. Every day, without fail, she opens her mouth to say the magic sentence, her vocal chords humming with her power...and nothing comes out.

The eyes of the people she charmed back in Arizona haunt her. The color in their irises would glaze over with opaque white as they entered a state of obedient hypnosis. Even the memory makes Piper shiver.

She doesn’t want to harm anybody, she doesn’t want these stupid powers. They were useful in saving herself and her friends, but there’s no reason for them now. They’re only a dark little whisper in Piper’s ear, asking her if it was really worth it, if she’s really a monster.

* * *

Leo isn’t an idiot.

That is the most important fact about him because if you know that, you can guess almost everything else.

Leo is the exact opposite of an idiot. He’s a freaking  _ genius _ . Geniuses don’t make dumb assumptions, and geniuses don’t hope for irrational things.

Most of all, geniuses notice things.

At exactly three AM every night, Jason sneaks out through his window. To where exactly, Leo doesn’t know. All he knows is that Jason sits on the roof for six minutes, loses track of time, and flies off somewhere.

( _ Yes _ , he knows Jason’s schedule.  _ No _ , it’s not creepy because he has trouble sleeping anyway and Jason’s obvious and...just forget it, forget about it.)

Leo wonders how it feels to be able to fly. The closest he’s ever come is his grapple hook, and that doesn’t even give him the full experience. 

There’s a twisted part of Leo that wishes it had been him. Not to take Jason and Piper’s suffering, but because he wants to do what they can. He wants to defy the odds, prove to the people who doubted him that he can be extraordinary.

Being closer to Jason and Piper doesn’t hurt, too. In the three months since they were found, they seem to be in their own little bubble that doesn’t include Leo. He understands that he can never understand what they went through, he’ll never be able to grasp the concept.

But he’s their best friend. They at least need to let him try.

* * *

Jason feels the wind before it hits him.

He’s been practicing with his powers for a while, he should be ready for this. Jason stands at the top of the largest building in town, an office complex. It’s around forty feet up in the air and the roof of a small business is a sprint away.

He is going to jump to the grocery store.

Three-thirty AM in Nevada means complete silence. Jason sees a Target sign in the distance and a total of three people in his line of sight. If he looks up, he can see millions of stars dotting the black-velvet sky.

With a huff, Jason switches his weight from foot to foot, preparing himself. When he shakes out his hands, air swirls around them. Jason has learned that he and the air are connected now. He doesn’t control it, it’s drawn to him and responds.

“Alright, Jason,” the young boy whispers to himself. “We can do this, we can do this. We’re never gonna get better if we don’t-”

“Are you  _ talking  _ to yourself?” 

Jason whips around to see Piper standing by the roof entrance with a grin. He relaxes and matches her expression.

“Maybe,” he admits. “I’m...I’m trying to figure something out.”

Piper’s brown eyes flicker from him to the distance below the building. Jason really hopes she doesn’t think he’s trying to, you know, die. 

“Can you take me with you?” She asks unexpectedly. Jason’s eyes widen at her request, Piper looks nervous.

“Um, sure, but why?”

A smile quirks Piper's lips as she shrugs. “I don’t know. I just feel like...if we’re more than human, we should do some more than human things. You get?”

Jason nods and sits on the ledge of the building. Piper anxiously copies his movement, something Jason notices.

“C’mon, Pipes,” he laughs. “It’ll be fine, you won’t fall.”

“How am  _ I _ supposed to know that?” She changes her stance on the act of roof jumping rather quickly for the girl who suggested it.

“Because I’ll catch you,” he says sincerely. Piper’s eyes flash in the midnight darkness as she blushes.

“Thanks,” she murmurs. Jason nods.

They don’t speak about what happened three months ago, nothing more than the standard rundown for the cops. Jason feels like they should talk about it.

“Can we-”

“Is it alright if we-”

They both clamp their mouths shut at the same time. Awkward silence befalls the preteens. Jason turns red and Piper distracts herself by kicking the side of the building.

“You can talk,” she whispers. Jason smiles his thank you.

“Piper, what do you think of your powers?”

Her mouth recedes into a thin line at the question. Jason is pretty sure she hasn’t even used them.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think my hearing is better, like, a  _ lot  _ better. I can hear Mr. Winters cursing the seventh graders out across the hallway during math.” Jason whistles impressively, letting her go on.

“I know you already know this, but I can tell people to do stuff... then they do it.” Jason doesn’t miss the air of guilt and disgust surrounding her. He’s known Piper for almost three years, and he knows that Piper’s tough but she doesn’t like hurting people. 

“I can also copy people’s voices,” Piper shrugs. “Which is pretty cool.”

Jason laughs at the idea of a voice that’s not Piper’s coming out of her mouth. “Can you do Leo?”

She grins, the blue bands of her braces flashing at him. In a dead-on impression of Leo, Piper says: “ _ I won’t admit it, but I once rigged the principal’s office with feathers and glue for a prank then forgot and walked right into it _ .  _ I looked like a chicken, but much uglier _ .”

Jason almost falls off the side laughing.

“Be careful!” Piper scolds him, back to her regular voice. Jason grins at her sheepishly.

“Sorry, Pipes.”

Comfortable silence befalls them for a few seconds before Jason gets up. He reaches his hand out to Piper’s.

“You ready?” He asks. The air pressure around him begins to build, gusts of wind swirl around his feet. Piper nervously takes his hand.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she mutters. Jason smiles one last time, for real, not the ones he gives Hera nowadays or his therapist. A real, bright smile.

Then he takes a deep breath, builds the air pressure around their bodies, and jumps.


	9. high enough to fly, high enough fall

“Leo, did you get one of these?”

Piper slides her phone across Hera’s dining table to Leo. He picks it up as he chews bacon and scans the email.

“Nah. When did you even apply?”

“I didn’t!”

Jason gestures to Leo to pass him the phone and Leo obliges. Hera shoots them dirty looks from the head of the table, but says nothing.

Saturday mornings at Jason’s house are tradition to the trio. Before Jason and Piper were abducted, it had been the McLean mansion due to the bliss brought on by an empty manor. Hera had protested against leaving them alone, though, and moved their tradition to her home instead.

The email currently being passed around the table is from a mysterious institution called New Rome Academy. Piper doesn’t remember applying to such a place but, apparently, she had been accepted. 

“Yeah, I got the same email,” Jason says through a stack of pancakes. Piper wrinkles her nose at him.

“Jason, that’s nasty.”

Leo pulls out his phone from the bottom of his thigh, refreshing the mail app three times before giving up. His lips tug into a frown.

“I didn’t get an email,” he says softly. Then, pretending to perk up, he reaches across the table and snatches Piper’s phone from Jason’s hands. The blond boy begins to whine, but Leo ignores him and reads the email aloud.

“‘New Rome Academy is a boarding school located in New Rome for troubled students aged eleven to eighteen. Our staff are experts in their fields and dedicated to their students. Our mission statement is to instill discipline in our students and encourage interpersonal relationships between’ _ - _ ” Leo snickers and looks at Jason out of the corner of his eyes. “Dude, this sounds terrible. Like a mix of therapy and military school.”

Jason glares at him through his new black glasses and snatches the phone back. “Well, it doesn’t sound  _ so  _ bad.”

A prick of hurt goes through Leo’s chest at his words. He glances at Piper to see the same contemplative look on her face.

“I think you could do better,” Leo shrugs nonchalantly. “Some stuffy boarding school in Cali? Come  _ on _ , Pipes. I thought you were trying to avoid all that bull.”

“Language,” Hera chimes.

“Sorry,” Leo apologizes with a grimace. Piper nods her head and continues eating her vegan pancakes, but Leo sees the way her eyes glitter with possibility. Jason doesn’t say anything, and the rest of the meal is eaten in silence.

Desperately, he turns to Hera. “Aunty Hera?”

“Leo, I am not your aunt.”

“Aunty Hera,” he repeats. “ _ Please _ don’t tell me you’d let your stepson go to another state for high school. Doesn’t that sound super dumb,  _ isn’t  _ it super dumb?”

His voice rises an octave, and he sees Piper slightly flinch. She still doesn’t know how to control her hearing yet. Hera smiles kindly.

“I’d have to speak with my husband about it,” she says. “And it’s a boarding school so it may not be so bad.”

Leo groans and goes back to eating. Jason rolls his eyes at him.

“Why are you so dead set on us not going,” he grumbles. “It’s just school.”

The smaller boy matches his best friend’s expression. Piper nervously glances in between the two boys then gets up and takes her phone back.

“Can we just forget about this,” Piper pleads. “If we wanna get to the mall before all the parking’s taken, we’re gonna have to hurry up.”

* * *

Apparently, there’s a summer camp for new students.

Leo ignores the blooming sadness in his chest as he watches Piper and Jason draft their essays for New Rome Academy. He’s drafting one too, but the probability of him being accepted without invitation is very low.

Piper had convinced him to send an email to the school and start writing his essay too. Jason had helped him collect all his science and robotics achievements into a folder for the application form. Leo knows they just don’t want him to feel left out.

“You know that New Rome is the most crime infested city in the world, right?” Leo says nonchalantly. He’s done his research on the city, to know what his friends are leaving him for. “It’s super dangerous.”

Piper rolls her eyes. “My dad went to the school a couple weeks ago and he said that there are a lot of safety measures in place. It’s like a bunker. They  _ have  _ a bunker.”

“ _ They have a bunker _ ,” Leo mocks under his breath. Jason leans back in Piper’s swivel chair and flexes his wrists.

“Leo, come on, you’ll be coming with us anyway. And it’s not like we’ll get hurt there. Me and Piper have our powers.”

Again, a reminder of Jason and Piper’s powers. Leo can’t help but feel jealous. How does it feel to not be afraid of life? To have complete confidence that you can face what comes at you, even at the tender age of thirteen?

Piper scoffs from her bed. “Jason, you’re the only one who even knows how your powers work. Not all of us got so lucky…”

With a frown, Jason twists to look at her. “Piper, I’m not lucky.”

Her eyebrows shoot up and even Leo knows that wasn’t the right thing to say. 

“Really?” She challenges, her voice rising in volume and potency. Leo feels a certain static in the air at her volume. “If you’re  _ not  _ lucky, how bad are your headaches because you can hear everything, Jason? Did  _ you  _ go five weeks without talking?”

Jason’s head droops a bit in shame, but it’s not enough for the young girl as she continues to rant.

“You  _ love  _ your powers, Jason, and you  _ should _ . But excuse me if I don’t want to make people freaking robots or get overwhelmed when the bell rings. I hate the things I can do and if I could take it back, I would. So you  _ are  _ lucky and don’t act like we’re some superheroes or something.” Piper shakes her head. “We’re just middle schoolers.”

The static in the atmosphere rises as she glares at Jason. For a terrifying second, Leo’s eyes grow lethargic and sleepy, the same glazed look over Jason’s eyes. Piper’s eyes widen at her friends as the result of her charmspeak washes over them.

“Stop it!” She screams, and Leo’s vision clears. Slowly, he blinks and meets Piper’s tear-filled brown eyes.

Sniffling, she gestures to them. “See,” the guilt in her voice can’t be missed, along with the tremble. “That’s why I don’t like my powers. All they ever do is hurt people."

They continue writing in silence.

* * *

Eighth grade crawls and sprints by at the same time.

Leo’s eyes look over the crowds at eighth grade graduation when it’s his turn to walk across the stage. His certificate for finishing the math program is in the hands of the principal, and a couple robotics awards too. Piper and Jason scream at the top of their lungs when he walks down, and he flashes a peace sign with his tongue out at the crowd.

The gag helps him ignore the butterflies in his stomach and the possibility that he might not see them again.

By the end of the ceremony, they’ve already snuck away from the parents and classmates to the nearest empty classroom.

Piper flashes a straight, brace-less grin. “We did it, guys. We graduated  _ middle school _ .” 

She wears a grey sweatshirt over the purple knee-length dress a nanny had forced her into. Her thick brown hair had recently been cut in a short choppy haircut, done by herself. Apparently, she had wanted to “reinvent herself” for high school.

Leo lies on top of a desk, the top buttons of his formal blue shirt undone. “It’s been literal hell but yay us, I guess.”

Jason sits crisscross applesauce on the desk next to Leo. Leo looks at him carefully and  _ definitely  _ not in interest. For scientific reasons, he notices that his best friend is a little bit taller and his blond hair is still perfectly shiny. Sky blue eyes behind clear lenses catch Leo’s and smile. Heat crawls up Leo’s cheeks as he smiles back.

“Don’t be a pessimist,” Jason teases him. “It was hard but we got through it. I think that’s a pretty big achievement on our part.”

Leo rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

“Come on!” Jason pokes Leo’s ribs. “Leo, you’ve gotten so many awards this year! You could apply to any STEM high school you wanted. Why aren’t you happy?”

_ Because you guys could be leaving me for California _ , Leo’s brain responds. Instead of potentially depressing all of them, he flashes a troublemaker’s grin.

“There’s one more thing you guys should know,” he says slyly, sitting up and changing the topic. Piper peers at him curiously.

“What did you do, Valdez?”

Leo smirks. “I might not be coming back to this hellhole, so I might as well go out with a bang, right?”

Her brown eyes sparkle. “You  _ didn’t _ .”

“I did,” Leo winks. “Hidden slime buckets over the cafeteria and auditorium entrances and exits. Should be scheduled to fall in a minute or two.” Jason stifles a snicker and Piper full on laughs.

“Also the principal’s office because I hate him.”

Right on cue, there are outraged screams from the auditorium area. Piper flinches, but not as much as she used too. Leo hops up from the desk, dusts off his shirt, and smiles at his friends.

“Shall we?” 

Piper rolls her eyes and pushes the door open. The three kids sprint down the hallways they know so well, laughing as loudly as they can. Somehow, they find themselves at the entrance of the school’s roof.

“How are we supposed to escape from here,” Leo huffs, hands on his knees as he catches his breath. Jason gives a rare smirk and opens the door to the roof, the warm wind blowing in their faces and tousling Jason’s blond hair.

“I’ve only done this with Piper,” Jason warns. Leo glances at Piper, who has an excitable smile on her features. 

“You’ve only done what?” Leo asks warily. He can hear the principal demanding for him to be found, because everybody knows only Leo would have the audacity to do such a thing.

“Jumped off a roof,” Piper smirks. 

Leo approaches the edge of the building, his brain calculating and concluding that it’s around fifty feet high. 

Fifty feet for him to fall.

Jason looks at him meaningfully and reaches out his hands to him and Piper. Piper doesn’t hesitate taking his hand, but Leo’s a bit more careful.

“Jason, I know you think you’re Superman or something, but...we could die.” Leo points at the ground and looks Jason in the eye. “We could literally  _ die  _ if you let go of that air pressure for, like, a second.”

Jason nods. “I know. We won’t.”

“How do you know?” Leo demands. “I’m not like you guys. How do you know I’ll survive this?”

In the ten months since Jason and Piper had gotten their powers, they’ve discovered that the two have enhanced abilities. They have better endurance, they’re stronger, more durable, and faster. Jason’s more aware of his surroundings and Piper’s super-human level hearing add to it. They are more than human, better than human.

Leo is only human.

Jason steps closer to Leo, the wind swirling slightly around him. A gentle look is cast over his eyes.

“Leo,” he whispers. “Do you trust me?”

The smaller boy hesitates. Of course he trusts Jason, without a shadow of a doubt. He just doesn’t know whether Jason is overestimating himself.

Still, the look in Jason’s eyes is so sure, Leo can’t help feeling like he’d follow him anywhere.

So, with a huff, he takes Jason’s hand. It’s warm. Jason grins and steps up to the ledge, letting the air swell around them and lift their feet off the ground.

“If I die, I’m haunting you!” Leo shouts over the winds. Jason doesn’t hear him, his eyes are closed.

When Jason steps off the ledge, Leo screams. The wind whips at their faces as they freefall for seconds that feel like hours, hours where he can feel his mortal coil dissolve to ashes in his soul.

Leo’s convinced that he won’t live to see tomorrow until the air sporadically builds under their feet and they crash into the ground. Leo rolls until his back hits a brick wall, Piper and Jason laying in various sprawled positions in front of a corner store.

Everything hurts, but he hasn’t sprained anything. Sorely, he sits up against the wall and rubs his arm.

“What the _heck_ , Jason?” He demands. His head is killing him. “I thought you had the hang of it.”

Jason sits up on the sidewalk across from him, peering at Leo curiously. “Wait, did that hurt you?”

Leo glances at Piper, who looks perfectly fine and is giving him the same strange look. “It doesn’t hurt for you two? We literally just crashed into the freaking ground, are you kidding me?”

Jason cringes. “Sorry, I’ll have to work on it. The rough landing never really...never really hurts us.”

_ Us _ . Us meaning Jason and Piper. Leo stuffs down the unpleasant feeling and the hammering of his heart and shrugs.

“It could be worse,” he says nonchalantly. “We could be blood pancakes in this very spot so I guess you did alright.”

Jason and Piper groan at the visual he gave them and get up. Piper gives him a hand and pulls him up. Flying through the air makes standing on the ground feel foreign, but Leo can’t say he didn’t enjoy the experience.

The way the adrenaline ran through his veins and his heart pounded as they free-fell was addicting. Leo craned his neck to see the top of the building, shading his eyes from the sun.

He jumped from that.

He, a regular little boy, jumped off a fifty foot building.

An infectious smile spreads over his lips and, soon, Jason and Piper are smiling back. As they walk home, Leo makes a promise to himself.

All by himself, he’ll get to the same level as his friends. He’ll be just as strong, fast, and durable as Jason and Piper. 

He’ll be able to jump that building without them someday.


	10. the euphoria of leaving

One last time, Jason walks the path to school.

He doesn’t want to be afraid of a place, no matter how significant it is. He crosses the road, passes the fro-yo place, and slowly approaches the alley where he had been abducted.

The hairs on his arm stand up in goosebumps. He can see it a couple feet away, standing regularly as if the placement of that alley didn’t change his life. 

He stops right before the turning of the wall. His mind flashes with memories of a syringe in his neck, darkness overtaking him, a bag being pulled over his head as he murmurs Leo’s name.

Suddenly, he’s back in the steel mill. The freezing cold steel mill with stale air and two weeks of darkness. Another syringe in his arm, the one that gave him powers, another one in his right arm. Four other kids scream in his ears in unison. Their voices blend into a horrible symphony. Jason forces himself to stay in that alley, to face what he’s been running away from.

The three week long fatigue after being rescued comes back to him. Piper’s five week long silence, when she couldn’t speak for fear of who she’d hurt. His head pounds with the headaches he had gotten for a month afterward.

The alley brings every terrible memory he had tried to bury in waves. Jason doesn’t know he’s crying until someone is tapping his shoulder and asking if he’s okay. He looks up with them with watery eyes. They have brown eyes and thin black eyebrows. 

“I will be,” Jason promises as he wipes his eyes and gets up from his huddled position. He won’t be in Nevada, not unless he wants to come back. He’ll never have to walk past this stupid alley for the next four years.

So he nods again and takes the stranger’s hand. “I’ll be okay.”

* * *

Two weeks ago, Leo had been accepted into New Rome Academy.

He doesn't have to leave his friends, he doesn't have to be alone again. Leo has made so much progress, he'll be damned if he lets a stupid social worker hinder his journey.

Leo stares at the social worker across the desk, certain that he can sway her. She has gray hair, weathered, pale skin, and thin golden glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.

If he leaves for New Rome Academy’s summer school next week, he’ll become property of California. New Rome has the program open to kids in the system but it’s a lot of paperwork.

“Just do the paperwork while I’m there,” Leo suggests. The social worker shakes her head.

“Leo, it’s not as easy as you think. You’re going to live there, according to you, it’s not just a visit.”

“It can be,” Leo argues. “It takes, what, a week to finish the paperwork. Just start now and it’ll be done. Why don’t you want me to go?”

A flicker of conflict goes through the social worker’s grey eyes, and Leo knows.

He’s a success story for the department. If they find a “nice” family for a kid genius who’s always made trouble, the department gets the glory. If they hand him over to California, then California might get that.

It’s not about him. It never was.

With a huff, Leo leans back in his chair. “What can I do, then?” He asks. “I really want to go to this school.”

“Why?” The social worker wrinkles her nose. “It’s located in the worst city in the world, crime-wise.”

Leo wants to go because Piper and Jason want to. They try to keep it under wraps, but Leo notices how much they want to get out of Nevada. Piper hates walking past the place she and Jason had been abducted, and they have to walk past it every day. Jason wants to explore the lengths of his powers, something he can’t do in a small town in Nevada. 

Leo just wants to keep them all together.

So he shrugs and pretends to be melancholy, something he knows that social workers love.    


“I need to get out of here,” Leo sighs. “I want to see more, be more, and New Rome is close to a lot of good out-of-school robotics programs. I really want a nice career in robotics or engineering, get everything together. Might as well start now.”

He’s totally making this up, but the social worker (who’s never been very intelligent) practically melts. She places a hand on her chest and nods sympathetically.

“I absolutely understand that, Leo,” she says. “I’m so happy you’re starting to take our advice and start the path to healing now. You’ve been through a lot for a kid your age.”

Leo nods uncomfortably, hoping she doesn’t bring up his mom.

“First your father, then your mother,” she shakes her head, overcome by sympathy Leo doesn’t want. “Then you had to find your friends at the beginning of the year. I’m so sorry, Leo.”

He nods again, but the woman keeps talking. She even reaches out for his hand and squeezes it. “You go and attend that camp, go to that school. Do us proud here in Nevada.”

Leo gives her a bright, fake smile and gets up from his chair. “Thank you so much, ma’am. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me! I won’t let you down, really!”

When he turns his back to the social worker’s door, he silently gags. Piper waits for him outside the building, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jean shorts.

“You’re coming!” She throws her arms around him in a hug. Leo awkwardly pats her back. She’s taller now, too, the same height as he is. 

“I had to kiss her butt to do it,” Leo grumbles. Ryan, Piper’s bodyguard, sits in the driver’s seat of a black Audi. Leo gets into the backseat with Piper. “It was terrible. I’m so happy I never have to see that white lady again.”

Piper snorts. “How bad is she?”

“She once asked me how I make my tacos,” Leo says drily. “On Tuesday.”

Even Ryan stifles a cringe. “Congratulations on your microaggression!” Piper says fake-cheerfully, waggling her fingers in the air. Leo smiles.

“Anyway,” he changes the subject. “Did you ever figure out why New Rome emailed you?”

Piper shakes her head. “No, actually. It’s weird. My dad visited the school and said it’s really good but every time I email them, I never get a response.”

The skeptical part of Leo thinks it’s a scam, but if Piper’s dad already said it’s legit, how can he think so? 

As he looks out the window, his brain tries to figure it out. Jason would roll his eyes and say that it’s lingering paranoia from the beginning of the year, but he’s over that.

Leo also doesn’t know how trustworthy Jason’s measure of “okay” is, though. Jason says he’s over the events of the school year, but he still looks everywhere before going somewhere. He always makes sure Leo and Piper are beside him when they go anywhere, and he shudders every time they pass the place of the kidnapping.

He’s over that.

* * *

On their last day in Nevada, Piper makes Jason and Leo sleep over at Jason’s.

Bowls of sorbet are scattered around the living room, along with candy wrappers and soda cans. A horror movie none of them are paying attention to plays on the massive TV.

“What’s one thing you’ll miss about this place?” Piper asks them. She sits backwards on the sofa, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

“The euphoria of finally leaving,” Leo deadpans. He throws an M&M in his mouth and ignores Piper’s glare.

“Leo, take this seriously. It’s our last day here, and we might never come back.”

“I still don’t see an issue.”

Jason laughs from the couch, sneaking a glance at Piper from his spot. Leo has been pretending not to notice the little glances they’ve been giving each other all day. It’s starting to get exhausting.

“So,” Leo says. “What are you guys’ schedules?”

The day before, they had been emailed their camp and summer schedules. The camp would take place on campus, but a lot of the activities would be similar. 

Piper pulls out her phone to check. “For school, I have Algebra, English One, Biology, American History, Chorus, and...wait a minute,” she frowns. “I don’t have P.E.”

Leo laughs. “Why are you complaining?”

“Because you’re supposed to have six classes a day, dumbo.” Piper refreshes the screen of her phone. “I only have five.”

Jason immediately checks his phone. With wide eyes, he says the same thing as Piper. 

“That’s so weird,” Jason mumbles. “I only have five classes, too. _And_ I’m missing P.E.”

Leo checks his school schedule and, to his dismay, he has all six classes. 

“Maybe it’s a glitch,” Leo says unconvincingly. “Maybe they just forgot to fill it in.”

Piper nods and Jason hums his agreement, but Leo knows they’re only humoring him.

Nowadays, they’ve been doing that a lot. Humoring him.


	11. the melancholy in new beginnings

Piper was born in California.

Before her mom had left, and before her dad had thrown himself into his career as a result, Piper had spent eight mediocre years in the Golden State. Her father had taught her how to surf on the golden beaches, she would go to the boardwalk almost every weekend.

New Rome is quite different from LA, Piper finds. The architecture of the city is relatively modern, with trendy cafes and housing designs. It’s the little details, though, the ones that make Piper squint, that catch her eye. 

The dark alleyways, where Piper’s increasingly sharp hearing can pick up drug deals and shady agreements, stick out like sore thumbs against the modern architecture. Homeless people sit by shops and Piper can count at least four pickpockets.

By the time they get to the school, Piper thinks she’s figured it out. The light design of the city is merely a mask for the ugliness underneath. The sun and a smile covers a bleeding wound traced to the heart of New Rome. She doesn’t know how she feels about that. If she’ll spend the next four years here, she wants those years to be real and honest. She wants an unfiltered experience of what it’s like to be in New Rome.

New Rome Academy is wide and tall, taking up a great deal of space. The school is white and silver-steel, with a slanted garden roof and many windows. At the entrance of the school are wide, white-stone steps. There are trees and shrubs on the ground, high school students frolicking around the campus.

The sight of the school makes Piper feel slightly ill. The very design reminds her of the prep schools attended by the girls who would make fun of her in elementary school.

The bus stops and Piper begins to pick up her bags from under the seat. They’re unusually heavy, but she had to pack for four years.

“You ready?” Jason asks her. He sat right next to her on the bus ride, and his eyes are filled with awe at the school.

Piper exhales a nervous breath and meets Jason’s eyes. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

When Jason smiles, his eyes are bright. Piper gets that feeling she’s gotten repetitively since the beginning of the year. They’ve been through a lot together, and it seems like Jason’s developed a sixth sense to her.

Piper feels like Jason is the only person who really understands her and, to her newly fourteen years of emotional intelligence, that’s practically love.

Leo is in the seat right next to them talking to a girl with brown skin and auburn hair in a million shoulder length twists. Piper didn’t pay much attention to her during the ride, she was absorbed in conversation with Jason.

When the bus stops in front of the school, everybody gets up and begins to take their backpacks and cases from under the seats. Some are bigger than others, depending on the student. Piper’s bags are particularly heavy, she would have packed her entire room if she could.

“Guys!” 

Leo runs up to them from behind once they’re outside. He’s grinning. 

“Guys, you’ll never guess who I found!” 

Piper’s eyes move to the girl to his right who’s smiling nervously. It takes a couple seconds before she recognizes the freckled brown face, auburn hair, and hazel green eyes framed by dark lashes.

It’s the girl from the steel mill. The one who had frozen time.

Jason’s eyes widen as he stares at her, Piper is feeling very similar emotions.

“Um…” Piper stutters and fumbles over her words before pushing a hand out awkwardly. “Um, hi. I, um, I never got to say thanks for like...the thing.”

The girl shakes her head with a kind smile and pulls Piper into a hug. It takes the Cherokee girl by surprise, but she returns it slowly.

“Don’t thank me,” the girl says cheerfully. “My name’s Rachel. I didn’t know you guys went here.”

Piper shrugs and exchanges a look with Jason. “We don’t. I just got a random email saying I was accepted.”

A contemplative frown tugs on Rachel’s lips as she walks toward the entrance of New Rome Academy with the trio. After a second of thinking she speaks.

“Same thing happened to me,” she says. “But mine said it was a ‘prestigious correctional school to build up the next generation.’ Percy and Annabeth’s said the same thing.”

“Who are they?” Jason asks. Rachel glances over her shoulder to look at him strangely.

“Really?” She frowns. “Percy and Annabeth were there on that day too...you know..”

Leo’s eyes practically bulge out of their sockets. “Wait, the invisible girl?!” He hisses. Rachel laughs.

“She’s not invisible anymore but you might not want to bring it up. It was kinda traumatic.”

Piper’s head spins with the new information. “Is every kid from the steel mill here? W-why would they be here?”

Rachel shrugs. “We don’t know yet. We all just got weird emails that said we were accepted. My parents loved the idea so…” 

Her eyes take a downcast turn as her friendly nature fades into despondency. Piper didn’t even know Rachel’s features could sink so low.

Leo looks slightly panicked, he was never good in emotional instances. Jason tries to give Rachel an encouraging smile.

Piper doesn’t know the right words, so she just slips her hand in Rachel’s with a small smile.

“We’ll figure it out, Rachel,” she promises.

* * *

It’s the first day of camp and he’s already in trouble.

Even with the tour from the beginning of the day, it had still taken Jason a couple tries to find the sunny, open area of the principal’s office.

Nervously, Jason opens the light wood door to the principal’s office. He’s supposed to be in the dining hall with Leo, but he had been called to a mysterious meeting with the principal. 

He goes through anything he possibly could have done to warrant such a thing. Maybe he had accidentally gone to the wrong dorm? Maybe he had bumped into a teacher on accident and forgotten to say sorry. Maybe he had-

“Wait,” his thought process halts as he takes in the scene in front of him. “What are you guys doing here?”

There are six kids sitting in chairs in front of the desk. Piper sits in the middle and the Rachel girl from earlier sits right next to her. Her posture is relaxed, but her eyes scream panic and confusion.

Slowly, Jason studies the faces of the kids sitting around her. For some reason, he only partly recognizes three of them, like his brain is purposefully putting up barriers in his memory. 

There’s a small girl with dark brown skin and curly brown hair sitting on the very left. Next to her is a chubby boy with a buzzcut who’s camp lanyard says “F. ZHANG”. They’re quiet in a familiar way, and Jason wishes he can remember why.

On the very right is a boy around Jason’s height with brown skin and curly hair. He has striking green eyes and a resting bitch face rather intense for a boy his age. His eyes land on Jason then widen and cool in realization. They flash for a good second, and Jason finally remembers.

The boy from the mill.

His eyes dart back to the girl and the boy on the left. They were at the mill, too.

_ Rachel  _ was at the mill,  _ Piper  _ was at the mill, the boy,  _ Percy _ , was at the mill.

Jason frowns. “W-what’s going on?” His voice comes out panicked and jagged. There’s a good chance the girl with blonde hair was at the mill, too. She might have been the invisible girl.

Memories of anesthetics, syringes, and a whirlwind of pain overtake Jason just then. The well-furnished principal’s office is starting to close in on him. He needs to get out, he needs to get out _ he needs to get out _ -

“Jason.” Piper’s smooth voice rolls over him like the calming tide. “Jason, you’re okay, just...please, just sit down.”

It’s just enough charmspeak to calm him down but give him autonomy. The breath in his lungs is restored as he obeys and sits down next to Piper and the blonde girl.

He just notices the woman sitting at the desk. She looks much too young to be a principal, she looks like she’s in her early twenties. Her long dark hair is pinned up in a high ponytail and her ears are studded with gold and silver piercings on either ear. She’s dressed in casual clothes, too.

She raises an eyebrow with a mysterious smile. “Are you alright, Jason?”

Jason nods numbly. There’s a certain ache forming in the middle of his forehead as he tries to work out the reasons for this meeting. A dark part of him that hides in the crevices of his mind whispers that she wants to snatch them, just like the rough-handed woman.

“Good.” She looks over each of the kid’s faces. When her eyes land on the blonde girl’s, she nods.

“Annabeth, right?” She asks. The blonde girl, Annabeth, nods curiously.

“Yeah, my name is Annabeth.” 

A vague memory recalls the voice of the invisible girl from the steel mill. Jason studies her, she’s very pretty. Annabeth’s blonde hair is curly and her eyes are steely gray.

“Hope you’re not feeling too disoriented from your invisibility spell,” the woman says casually. Annabeth flinches with the reminder and furrows her blonde eyebrows.

“How do you know about that?” She asks in a low voice. Her tanned fist clenches, like she’s preparing for a fight. “I never...I never told anybody about that.  _ How  _ do you know that?”

The woman smiles again, the same cryptid smile that makes Jason shiver in fear. “My name is Hylla, you’ll have combat classes with my little sister. We think we can help you, but only if you listen.”


	12. blood in the water

“Percy Jackson, right?” Hylla points a ballpoint pen at him. “H2O Matter Manipulation  _ and  _ you can harness potential energy in organic materials? Interesting…”

* * *

Hylla smiles at the brown eyed girl. “Piper Mclean? You’re gonna be an amazing hero.”

* * *

“Frank Zhang.” Hylla makes an interested sound in her throat. “You’re gonna be useful.”

* * *

“Annabeth Chase,” she mutters under her breath and scribbles on a pad. “You’d be great for stealth missions.”

* * *

“Hazel Levesque.”

Hylla looks the young girl up and down. She’s by far the youngest, only eleven years old, but according to Gaea Craig’s personal files, she’s one of the most powerful.

“How do you feel about teamwork?”

* * *

"Jason Grace," Hylla muses. The kid had almost had a panic attack the minute he had laid eyes on everybody. 

The young boy squirms uncomfortably in his chair under Hylla's scrutiny.

"Do you want to be a hero?"

* * *

Hylla opens her mouth to say Rachel’s name, the way she has for the individual children before she dismissed them. The redhead beats her to the punch.

“You’re Atlanta,” Rachel blurts out. “Y-you’re a vigilante!”

The Puerto Rican woman’s eyebrows shoot up. She hasn’t told Rachel about her identity yet, she doesn’t know what to expect with her. The only reason why Hylla knows the girl has powers is because of the camera footage from the steel mill.

Strangely, Hylla smiles. 

“You’re Rachel Dare?” Hylla asks. Rachel nods nervously. 

“Great!” Hylla leans forward on the desk, the silver necklaces around her neck jingle and clang. With a smirk and a flourish on a pen and pad, she says, “You’ll need to stay a bit longer. Tell me everything about your powers, Rachel.”

* * *

Crime hadn’t always been so violent.

Hylla remembers a time from before the major cities in the world experienced an explosion in blood. Before gangs roamed the streets and ran the cities. Before politics went completely dirty and the scales tipped. She remembers when you could go out at night with your friends without the fear of costumed freaks abducting you. Before hostage situation drills were less drills, more experiences. 

She remembers a time before there was a need for Atlanta.

The first shift into chaos experienced by America was with the emergence of two major crime bosses. A man who called himself Krios ruled the West Coast, and a man who called himself Kronos had power over the East Coast. A couple years ago, a man named Luke Castellan had wrestled control from Kronos over the East and created an elaborate crime network. His philosophy is organized chaos.

Hylla had been twelve years old when one of the smaller gangs run by Krios had broken into her home. They had fired bullets around the house haphazardly and demanded their valuables. Reyna had woken up from her nap, Bellona had pushed Hylla up the stairs and told her to protect her sister and father. 

Hylla was twelve when her mother died.

Even when she had handed over their valuables, they still shot her in the head.

That day had lit a fire in her belly. Hylla started learning how to fight from shady friends in her neighborhood, adding that task to taking care of their drunkard father and raising Reyna. At fourteen, Hylla started to patrol. She solved her first case at fifteen, defeated her first minor crime boss at sixteen.

She crafted the persona of Atlanta as New Rome’s protector, yes, but there’s something Hylla has tried to satisfy for years that she hasn’t. That insatiable desire for not just justice, but  _ revenge _ , eats at her every day. Her war on crime takes more from her every day. She feels it every time she lies in bed and feels the empty nothingness expand in her chest.

At twenty, Hylla realizes that she can’t fight alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wait a minute did I JUST FINISH MY FIRST LONGISH FIC??!! go me fr B)
> 
> okay but if u have any questions/are wondering anything about the characters, i'll try and answer them spoiler free bc the next work...will be diving into that a bit more

**Author's Note:**

> aaaahhh im so excited to start this! it's like 3 am rn but i need to post this now that chapter one is finished


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